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More Americans are now paying their mortgage often, and on time.

Foreclosure rate continues to fall

Mortgage delinquency rates, including loans in serious delinquency and even foreclosure inventory, fell at the start of 2017, according to the latest monthly Loan Performance Insights Report from CoreLogic, a global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider.

In January, 5.3% of mortgages were delinquent by 30 days or more, a drop of 1.1 percentage points from January last year.

“The 30-plus delinquency rate, the most comprehensive measure of mortgage performance, is at a 10-year low and rapidly declining,” CoreLogic President and CEO Frank Martell said.

“While late-stage delinquencies remain in the pipeline in selected markets, early-stage delinquency performance is stellar and the lowest it’s been in two decades,” Martell said. “The continued improvement in mortgage performance bodes well for the health of the market in 2017.”

Foreclosure inventory rates, which measures the share of mortgages in some stage of the foreclosure process, decreased to 0.8%, down from 1.1% last year. The serious delinquency rate, loans 90 days or more past due, including those in foreclosure, dropped to 2.5%. This is down from 3.2% the year before.

To more comprehensively monitor mortgage performance, CoreLogic examines all stages of delinquency as well as transition rates that indicate the percent of mortgages moving from one stage of delinquency to the next.

Early-stage delinquencies, loans 30 to 59 days past due, decreased in January to 2.1%, down from last year’s 2.4%. The share of mortgages 60 to 89 days past due also decreased to 0.7%, down from 0.8% last year.

“Steady job and income growth, combined with full-doc underwriting, has led to low early-stage delinquencies,” CoreLogic Chief Economist Frank Nothaft said. “January’s 0.9% transition rate for current to 30 days late is lower than a year ago and much lower than the 1.5% average from 2000 and 2001, during which the foreclosure rate was, conversely, lower than it is today.”